Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Installing 1 Windows and 1 GNU/Linux on one machine doesn't need much care. What if I want to install 2 Linux OSes?

Recently I installed Windows 7, along with Mint Linux and Fedora 9 (for special use). My procedure was Windows 7 -> Mint -> Fedora 9. It turned out there are several things to take care of:

1. One on hard disk there can only be maximally 4 primary partition. Mint and Fedora each requires at least 1 primary partition, which leaves for Windows 7 only two primary partitions.

2. Fedora shares the SWAP partition with Mint

3. Since Mint has a much more beautiful grub than Fedora (personal opinion), I didn't select install boot loader when I installed Fedora. After the installation I went back to Mint and edited menu.lst correspondingly, specifying where Fedora should boot and which kernel to use.